


Crescendo

by emeralddarkness



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, Lúthien knows how to hack the system pass it on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 22:00:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3265886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I choose a mortal life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crescendo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bookwormfaith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwormfaith/gifts).



It was a song to break your heart – he had known that much, even if he could not understand the words. That was as strange as the rest of it, to hear and not know, for the language sounded very much like that of the elves, but he could not place the meaning to the words he had known very nearly all his life. And yet, somehow it was familiar. There was a meaning there that he felt he could almost grasp.

The song trilled on, as high and cold and clear as the stars, sweet as honey, deep as night, so beautiful and so full of sorrow that it seemed a wonder any could stand and listen to it instead of collapsing. It might only have been the identity of the singer which kept _him_ upright, because it could only be Lúthien. He couldn’t see her any longer, for she had disappeared into the mist that hung thick in the air almost as soon as she appeared, but he could hear her, and for now that was enough to tether his soul against the feeling pulling at the edges of it, away, beyond the edge of the world. Until, of course, it stopped.

Somehow losing the music – he was dead and so could speak with authority on the subject – was worse than dying. It was death again, the second and by far the worse of the two, for elves and men were sundered in their fates, and now he could feel the call of the world’s end ready to blow him away like smoke. He would never see her again; he had resigned himself to that doom after she had vanished from him with fear and hope and love and heartbreak blazing in her eyes, but then there had been the music and now that that was gone he would never hear her again either, never ever. Death itself was very nearly a mercy in comparison.

Only, then, in the empty timelessness, she _was_ there again, somehow, _impossibly_ \- “Tinúviel,” he said in breathless wonder as she appeared in front of him. She flung herself forward into his arms, which he opened to catch her-

And-

_Slam_

The force of her impact should not have been at all heavy (nor, he felt, should he have been substantial enough to catch her), but it knocked them back in impossible ways, ways that made the air ripple and shimmer and break like the surface of a bubble into fragments of rainbows.

They were on the grass.

“How-?” he began in perfect bewilderment, and Lúthien, who was now lying on top of him with a radiant smile almost laughed and bent her head close over his. She stroked his hair away from his face, eyes brighter than stars and warm as all of springtime, and her fingers soft as flower petals.

“I choose you,” she said, which explained absolutely nothing, but as she bowed her head to rest it on his shoulder and curled her arms around him, as he curled human arms of flesh and bone around her and could hold her, as they lay tangled together with her night-black hair falling across both of them in the world of the living under the sun and the trees, he found he didn’t care.


End file.
